If you were ever in need of a cheap gaming laptop

Oct 12, 2015 22:50 GMT  ·  By

Most laptops are meant for portability: they must be light, have long battery life and provide enough performance to run video files, web browsers and Office applications. The Acer Aspire V15 Nitro does all that and more. Featuring an NVIDIA GTX 850M graphics card and 12GB of RAM, the Nitro is more a performance-oriented laptop, offering support for games, demanding apps and far more than what an office laptop will ever do.

Acer’s new 15” portable computer is not a gaming rig per se, although it can run recent games with some degree of proficiency. Just don’t expect it to do miracles with games like Witcher 3 or Shadow of Mordor. However, if you don’t have high expectations about what it can offer you, then you’d be surprised how powerful this machine is.

The Acer Aspire Nitro series has known many iterations within the same form factor. Encasing different processors during the past years, the Aspire Nitro has housed Intel Haswells, like the Core i5-4210H and Core i5-4210U accompanied with NVIDIA’s GTX 840, while the current laptop we reviewed is equipped with a very recent refresh that bears a decent Core i7-5500U Broadwell that’s built on the same 14nm manufacturing process like the current Skylake series.

The Broadwells are quite a rare model to be seen these days. Although this is not the desktop-dedicated model, Intel built the short-lived Broadwells as the logical continuation of the multi-thread performance of the Haswells. As we showed in our Intel Skylake Core i7-6700K review, even though the Skylake proves to be an overall more powerful CPU than the Haswell in single-thread computing, it still lags behind a bit when it comes to multi-threading.

Case

The Acer Aspire Nitro Broadwell refresh is built to rewrite the very concept of gaming laptops. While gaming laptops are usually known to be large, bulky, heavy, and basically a mockery of what it means to be a laptop, the fact that you can fold and carry them makes them in some way laptops and they are eventually sold as such. Well, Acer decided to have none of that, so it is determined to sell performance laptops with sizes well within what common sense will ask of portable computers.

Holding quite some powerful hardware in a relatively slim, 24mm casing, the Acer even manages to deceive the eye with the unit’s underside tapering off the sides. Made of black and matte plastic, the base unit’s upper part has a light rubber coating, which feels satisfying to the touch.

Lots of heat coming that way
Lots of heat coming that way

Although lacking a maintenance latch which would keep the laptop together during transportation, the handling characteristics of the machine are quite pleasing. However, if the Nitro is placed vertically, with the hinge down, the laptop will tend to stay slightly open.

The finish quality is fairly solid, and although it weighs 2.2 kg, it feels much lighter thanks to its tight build and slim shape.

The fan opening for cooling is at the back of the laptop and the speakers can be found beneath the device on the left and right side of the laptop. The downside of this feature is that sound will be slightly muffled, depending on what the unit stands on.

Interfaces and Ports

The Acer Aspire Nitro has a limited number of interfaces. It boasts three USB 3.0 ports and one HDMI port for external input on the right side of the machine. In front there’s a card reader, and one Kensington lock nearby the USB ports on the right. Although it’s lacking VGA or DisplayPort outputs, existing ports are well placed and there won’t be any clutter with all sorts of cables on either side of the wrist rest.

Connectivity

Equipped with an Atheros AR5BWB222 Wi-Fi, the device allows Wi-Fi within the 802.11 b/g/n standards, and the connection stays stable for around 13 meters around the router, but try not to put walls between you the Wi-Fi. For an Ethernet connection Acer offers a Gigabit LOL!  Ethernet chip from Realtek's RTL8168/8111 family. The Ethernet port has a nice spring-based cover that you have to open in order to plug the Ethernet cable, and every time it’s left unused, the port remains covered and safe, blocking foreign objects from entering the plug.

The laptop comes with a Bluetooth 4.0 module as well, and obviously a webcam, but don’t expect crystal clear images from the Aspire.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Nitro enjoys a backlight chiclet keyboard, which includes a num pad as well. The keyboard backlight uses red LEDs, and it suits the machine just fine. It doesn’t have any RGB lighting, but you can see the keys clearly in the dark. The keyboard is very reminiscent of the typical Apple keyboard, working nicely with short finger strokes and it feels very smooth and quiet.

The touchpad is basically a multi-touch ClickPad that is meant to replace the mouse. The pad has a large surface of 10.6 x 7.8 cm (~4.17 x 3 inches) and is easy to track the mouse with your finger. However, the touchpad lacks precision and it skips occasionally, so it’s best not to rely on it in case you want precision. The right click didn’t work very well on our tester unfortunately, but we believe this is not the case on every model out there.

Display

The Acer Nitro has a matte 15.6-inch IPS screen working in a native FullHD resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. Based on the Active Matrix TFT Color LCD technology, the screen enjoys LED backlight technology and Acer’s ComfyView features that allow a full 170 degrees visibility angle. It is a very bright screen thanks to Acer’s Color Blast full RGB so colors were intense and vivid with very little lag during intense action on the screen.

Performance

The Acer Aspire Nitro V15 isn't a gaming laptop so don't expect too much from a computer that runs on a GTX 850M card with a core clock of 876 MHz (+ Boost) 128-bit bus, 5000 MHz effective memory bandwidth and just about 640 shader units on a 28nm process technology chip.

Although running on a decent Broadwell-U i7-5500U dual-core CPU at 2,4GHz, with 3GHz Max Turbo Frequency, 4MB cache and a TDP of a lowly 15W, the performance of the machine is not really dictated by how well the processor runs but by how powerful the graphics card ultimately is and, obviously, the RAM the Aspire holds. However, when we’re talking about 12GB DDR3, we can hardly complain about any loading issues.

However, we put the entire machine, piece by piece, through its paces to really get an idea what we’re dealing with.

Processor – CineBench R15

As we’ve said before, this is a Broadwell-U Core i7-5500U dual-core CPU that runs at 2,4GHz. We tested the CPU using the Cinebench R15 benchmarking software. The benchmarking software test procedures include a comprehensive test of the main processor’s performance by rendering a photo-realistic 3D scene. This scene, with approximately 280,000 polygons, uses various algorithms and all available cores. The test result is displayed in Cinebench points.

We tested the Broadwell in two circumstances: plugged in and on battery, and the results came back very similar.

CPU with laptop plugged vs. CPU with laptop on battery
CPU with laptop plugged vs. CPU with laptop on battery

The plugged-in results came at 267 CP (Cinebench Points), which compared even to Cinebench’s internal data base is even lower than the Ivy Bridge mobile-aimed Core i7-3840QM which was launched in late 2012. Nevertheless, the TDP is clearly at fault here, since the Ivy Bridge eats more than twice the power the new Broadwell does, 45 Watt.

When the device was working on battery, however, the results came surprisingly similar but, strangely enough, not better. On battery mode, the Broadwell scored 273 CP, which is just a bit higher than the previous test, and not lower as we expected. We did try to figure out if we can put the computer in power saving mode, but that apparently didn’t affect processing power at all staying right in the same performance area.

DRAM Modules – PassMark’s Performance Test 8.0

The Acer Aspire is equipped with two DDR3 DIMM modules from Kingston, one having 8GB at 1.35V clocked at 800MHz and the other also at 4GB, 1.35V and 800MHz. We tested the Kingston memory modules with PassMark’s Performance Test and it gave us pretty solid results.

In the write and threaded speed test, Acer Aspire’s memory modules were behind DDR4 chips from Crucial, and other DDR3 chips from Samsung and Nanya, with 6930 points for the Acer Kingston, compared to 9343 points of Nanya and the 8384 for Samsung in write tests.

Threaded tests were also lagging behind against Crucial with 15491 vs Crucial’s 29868 and Samsung and Nanya’s 20705 and 17650 points. Interestingly enough, the modules didn’t fare that good in Latency tests as well. Although DDR3 is known to have a really good latency compared to the DDR4, it was beaten to the pulp by overclocked modules from ECC Team Group and even by older DDR2 modules from Transcend and Kingston.

Where do the RAM modules shine? Size. 12GB of DDR3L isn’t really sky-high, but it isn’t something to ignore either.

Storage Tests – AS SSD Benchmarks

The Acer Aspire Nitro V15 has two internal storage disks, one 1TB HDD from Western Digital, and the other, a 240GB SATA SSD from Liteon. Obviously, the SATA SSD contained the system files, while the Western Digital is left for the general storage. We tested them both, and here are the results.

WD HDD vs Liteon SSD
WD HDD vs Liteon SSD

The Liteon SSD isn’t that fast when compared to our similarly tested Kingston HyperX Savage SSD, especially in sequential read/write speed (458MB/s vs. Kingston’s 506MB/s). The Liteon SSD is generally 50MB/s slower than the Kingston high-performance SSD, but that’s not really a surprise after all, since the Liteon is more of a consumer device that comes inside a laptop and not sold separately, so we consider this result adequate.

The HDD AS SSD Benchmark came as expected, well within HDD standards, with 106 MB/s read and 98MB/s write sequential speeds.

Video Card Tests

3D Mark Advanced

Using the 3D Mark Advanced tests, we put the card through its paces, using the FireStrike Ultra, Extreme and Normal to see how it deals with 4K resolutions, 1440p resolutions and 1080p resolutions. These are the most demanding graphics tests available on the market and are meant to test the best graphics adapters the industry offers at the moment.

The first test was FireStrike Ultra, which tests the card at 4K UHD rendering resolution. Obviously, the card had a very unimpressive score of 688 with graphics test giving an average framerate of 3.69FPS, the physics score of 12FPS and a combined test of 1,68FPS to be exact. Clearly, the GTX 850M isn’t made to run 4K resolutions in any way, shape or form. CPU temperatures went haywire during this test, reaching 100 degrees Celsius at times.

3D Mark Advanced results - FireStrike, Extreme and Normal
3D Mark Advanced results - FireStrike, Extreme and Normal

During the FireStrike Extreme and Normal, the GTX 850M managed to get the score of 1351 in Fire Strike Extreme with an average of 5 and 7 frames per second, while the Normal test got a score of 2587 with an average framerate of 14 FPS in graphics tests, and a combined test of physics and graphics standing at 4FPS. Nothing impressive here, whatsoever. So how good are we at games then?

Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Telling the story of Geralt of Rivia and his fantasy adventures to find his stepdaughter Ciri, Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the most graphically demanding games to date. Featuring a wide array of graphical options, the new game from CDProjekt RED is also a very customizable game that, as you’ll see below, can run pretty well even on machines like the Acer Aspire.

Running the game on maximum settings will give you just 10PFS on the GTX 850M so you can forget about that. However, the Witcher is a quite versatile game, and if you tweak it enough, you can get some very playable framerates. We found out that playing at 1360 x 768 resolutions is by far the best way to play when combined with Medium settings.

We managed to get an average of 25 FPS in dense forests, which is the most demanding area for graphics cards, while the other zones ran smoothly at a bit more than 25FPS without any framerate hiccups and other issues. Overall, the GTX 850M offered a satisfying experience in the Witcher 3, and if you don’t have too high expectations from the graphics cards, you’ll be satisfied nonetheless.

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Obsidian’s latest game covers the non-Tolkien canon story of the ranger Talion who has to fight its way through Sauron orc captains in order to get his revenge for the death of his family at their hands. The game runs a bit better than Witcher 3, but also it depends on your settings. Usually, the lower the settings are, the higher the framerate. With the game running on 1344 x 756 resolution and medium settings, frame fluency can go as high as 43FPS, which is more than playable.

Medium Settings vs Ultra Settings
Medium Settings vs Ultra Settings

Ramp-up, the resolution and watch framerates fall in the 30s. The same thing happens if details start to go higher while the original 1344 x 756 resolution is kept.

The most demanding settings are FullHD resolution with everything on Ultra. The GTX 850M won’t do as bad as in Witcher 3, but the framerates will remain locked at around 20FPS. As a word of advice, keep to the Medium settings and the 1344 x 756 or 1440 x 900 resolution.

Metro: Last Light Redux

This is probably the game that runs best on Aspire’s GTX 850M. Despite its age, it features lots of advanced shaders. During our tests, we found out that on most resolutions, except the FullHD 1980 x 1080, the game runs smoothly at around 60FPS with settings on High and SSAO turned to Normal.

Although the best resolution to run when inside the tunnels of Metro is 1680 x 1050, the framerate will drop to about 40FPS when going outside, so you’d better make sure either to reduce the resolution a bit or turn off settings like SSAO that really eat up your 640 CUDA cores. Despite that, the game hardly drops below 40FPS, especially if you don’t run it on max settings and 1080p resolution, it rarely experiences frame drops, or stuttering of any sort. Unless you max out everything, Metro Last Light works like a charm.

Battery Tests

We put the battery to the test using the Imtec Battery Mark benchmark and managed to drain a 100% filled battery in two hours thanks to the benchmarks stress test. Although it’s clear that this isn’t the usual rate users will drain their battery, it’s likely that gaming sessions will see your battery dead in two hours as well.

Internet browsing saw the battery drain a lot slower, in about six hours.

Heat Tests

Thanks to dual cooling fans placed underneath the back of the laptop, overheating issues will be avoided most of the time. However, they do make a lot of noise, and every time we ran a graphically intensive application like 3D Mark or the Witcher, the cooling fans would start spinning very loudly.

To test how both the CPU and GPU heat up during intense use, we used FurMark v.1.17 and noticed the reason why the cooling fans spin like crazy during apps that stress the system. In almost an instant, both the GPU and CPU reach temperatures way higher than expected. Both CPU cores temperatures jumped to 96 and 84 degrees Celsius, turbo boosting to nearly 2.8GHz speed, while the GPU went to 81 degrees Celsius.


The Good

The Acer Aspire Nitro V15 is a decent laptop for gaming, as long as you never forget it’s a laptop in the first place. It will run all your DOTA 2 and League of Legends games without fault, but if you wish to run more graphically demanding games be prepared to turn the graphics down, sometimes even to the bare minimum.

The Bad

Although solidly built, the Aspire does not take harsh treatment kindly. It will scratch easily and you may even end up having hinge problems if you keep it open in weird positions. The fans are extremely noisy as well. Another issue I had with the machine is the typically large number of bloatware applications the laptop comes with at start. This is nothing particularly surprising since lots of laptops come nowadays filled with such software, but I found it on Acer’s Aspire laptop particularly distressing.

Conclusion

The Acer Aspire V15 Nitro works best when users are mindful of its limits. At around $1,100 you get to pay those extra $100 dollars for a pretty strong dedicated graphics card, when all the other alternatives at that price offer less convincing specs. The Aspire never disappoints if you plan to use it for games with moderate system requirements, like today’s popular MMOs or MOBAs, but don’t expect newer games to run just as smooth. Also, keep in mind to remove the bloatware, since it might clutter your RAM, as they mostly run in the background.

Acer Aspire V15 Nitro (24 Images)

Acer Aspire V15 Nitro - big, colorful and not too ambitious
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